Facebook Kills Real Life, Then Dies
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

One of the internet's killer apps may be on the verge of extinction.

The digital camera boom probably owes much to the fact that the under-25 generation lives to post Facebook updates. How else than through uploading countless digital images of oneself can one prove that one is alive?

It’s ironic that the quest for the internet’s “killer app” has resulted in the creation of a monster that threatens to kill real life. By real life I mean those moments in which we unself-consciously do things for their own sake — eat, think, play, study, shop, socialize, exercise — instead of for the sake of pursuing that perfect image for the next Facebook update.

For too many young people — and the terminally foolish at heart — Facebook is seen as the way to define oneself. If it’s posted on Facebook, it is so. Most Facebook users haven’t lived long enough to see why that’s a pact with the devil.

Facebook entries are a form of personal PR that can backfire, awfully. It’s one thing to create the images of a fun, clever, popular “me” surrounded by loving friends. It’s another to keep that up for a year or two or the rest of your life — especially as real life starts to presents challenges and satisfactions that go below the photogenic surfaces.

When you run out of photo ops because you’ve immersed in meaningful work or a meaningful relationship that simply can’t be photographed, do you want to remain defined by last New Year’s Eve pictures. Or worse, do you want to be seen as a dead-end character whose “real” life has dried up? Most people don’t. They make a valiant effort to go out and create new photo ops to avoid a slow, agonizing Facebook death.

And when all your social acquaintences are Facebook slaves, do you think they don’t see the calculation behind your whipping out the camera or switching your handset to camera mode? Does that consciousness of Facebook slavery cut into the authenticity of the moment, the sincerety of feelings all around?

And when everyone you’ve ever known has become a Facebook “friend”, have you lost touch with the concept of friendship, or simply the ability to reject anyone? Or are you one of those cold-hearted individuals who can start to deny some the right to join that “exclusive” circle? And is your social status really measured by the number of “friends” you’ve added? Or should it be measured by the number you’ve rejected?

And when all your schemes and deeds are documented by your Facebook posts and changes of status, are your next moves inhibited by that awful consciousness of what it might mean for your “status” and image? Aren’t there even a few schemes you don’t really want blasted to the world? If so, would people assume nothing is happening in your life during those increasingly long interludes?

And here’s the worst part: when you decide you just can’t keep up your Facebook entries, how will you wind down your life without appearing to have crawled under a rock? Maybe invite all your “friends” to a Facebook funeral?

There won’t be the need to do that, I suspect. Now that everyone and her mother are on Facebook — even if they never went to an elite university or even graduated from high school — and are wondering whether to add more friends or start pruning them, the smarter ones are already going private as they contemplate their escape back into real life.

Last one left on Facebook, remember to turn off the lights!